Dallas City News

The Dallas Cowboys lost to the Philadelphia Eagles on Sunday. For a Cowboys fan, that is never fun to say. It is for this reason that so many Cowboys fans who were on Team Tank last week wanted to see the team win. Sure, winning would have damaged draft position, but it would have been a win against the Eagles. That is never a bad thing.

Obviously that did not come to pass, much like the throws that Cooper Rush had in the City of Brotherly Love. The Cowboys got worked in short order by a team who is significantly better than them as they partied from start to finish in celebration of an NFC East title and 2,000-yard rusher.

Before we fully put the game away and never speak of it again, we have to assess it through the lenses of both team and franchise history. Thankfully tools such as Stathead and Pro Football Reference exist to help make this much easier and more efficient.

Here are this week’s historical notes. Spoiler, they are mostly bad.

Rico Dowdle is the 10th player in franchise history to rush for 1,000 yards

You are likely well aware that Rico Dowdle reached 1,000 yards rushing on the season during this game. Dowdle became just the 10th player ever to hit 1,000 yards on a season.

Something that is fun/depressing to think about is that Zack Martin has blocked for half of them in the seasons that they did it given that he played with DeMarco Murray, Darren McFadden, Ezekiel Elliott, Tony Pollard and obviously Dowdle at various points.

It was just the 37th 1,000-yard season from an undrafted player

Dowdle’s campaign was the first in franchise history ever authored by an undrafted player which is certainly commendable.,All told this was just the 37th instance in which any player in NFL history ran for 1,000 yards after not being drafted. Obviously several players did it a handful of times.

The longest winning streak on the season will officially be two

Eric Hartline-Imagn Images

This one didn’t require any fancy searches, but last week marked the last opportunity for the Cowboys to have a winning streak of longer than two games this season as they entered the contest having won their last two in a row. With the loss, the streak dies there given that there is only a single game left on the season.

Dallas had won two in a row just a bit earlier in the season as evidenced by the fact that they won four out of five before the Eagles game. I say all of this to say because the Cowboys will not have a winning streak of at least three games this year which marks the first season since 2015 since that was the case.

The Cowboys were on the other side of this kind of game recently

It didn’t really feel like one because we were so disconnected, but Sunday was a beatdown of the highest order against the Cowboys. Dallas failed to break double-digits and allowed the Eagles to break 40 points. Amazingly, Philadelphia did so with under 200 yards passing.

The last time in which a team did not break double-digits while their opponent had at least 40 (with under 200 yards passing specifically), it was Dallas who was administering the beatdown as it was the 2023 season opener when they blanked the Giants 40-0.

Offensive ineptitude of this kind has been tolerated twice before recently

On the subject of single and double digits, Sunday was the third game of the season for the Cowboys in which they did not break double digits. This season is now the first since 2017 in which Dallas had at least three games of such kind. You can see that the Cowboys had four then and also had four a couple of seasons prior in 2015.

You may be upset to learn that the Cowboys retained both their offensive coordinator (Scott Linehan in both seasons in question) and head coach (Jason Garrett in the same vein) after each of those seasons.

The Cowboys have now lost three in a row at Philadelphia, a rare thing

Something that has become a talking point in recent seasons has been how games between the Cowboys and Eagles have been a bit dull, generally speaking.

This is nobody’s fault. Injuries have happened to the quarterbacks on both sides of the rivalry which has meant that we have gotten Carson Wentz against Ben DiNucci, Dak Prescott against Gardner Minshew and obviously Jalen Hurts against Cooper Rush. This past Sunday was none of any of those as it was Rush against Kenny Pickett and eventually Tanner McKee.

Whatever the case, the Eagles have now beaten the Cowboys in three straight games in their home building in Philadelphia. The Cowboys have now lost three in a row at Philly for the fourth time in franchise history and the first in 20 years.